Not A Blonde Brat Anymore
by NintaiKyouboku
Summary: Artemis has been cured of his Atlantis Complex. A pair of nine-year-olds hack into his "unhackable" computer in hopes of finding a cure for their father's fairy-related illness, almost exposing the fairies.
1. Mulch Fails At Poker

"Ha, I win," Juliet smirked at Mulch from across the table, laying down her cards.

"I can't believe you two can be so calm while Artemis is in there, having his operation," Holly groaned.

"You cheated!" Mulch protested.

Butler was pacing around the cramped lobby room, hands interlocked behind his back. Artemis was inside the operating room, having his Atlantic Complex treated using a new technique. Juliet and Mulch were playing poker and Holly was sitting nervously on the sofa.

"Did not. You're just sore because you lost to me for the sixth time in a row."

"Will you two shut it?" Holly snapped. "Or go outside if you need to argue."

They both glared at Holly, and then glared at each other. Juliet grabbed the deck of cards, Mulch grabbed his sandwich, and both marched out the door.

Juliet set the cards down and began shuffling them. Mulch stuffed his sandwich in his mouth. "Let's play something else."

"Like what?" Juliet asked.

Mulch grinned at her, showing his huge yellowed teeth. "Go Fish."

* * *

><p>"He's awake!" the surgeon called. Then he paused. "Who's Minerva?"<p>

"Minerva…" Holly muttered, recalling the blonde genius.

Butler pushed past the four-feet-tall doctor and into Artemis's room. Artemis was propped up. His mismatched eyes blinked. "Where's Minerva?"

"I think she's currently vacationing with her parents in Australia," Butler said carefully.

Holly swallowed and looked down. _Why was the first person he asked about Minerva_? She'd expected him to ask about Mrs. Fowl, or perhaps Opal, or maybe N1…

Not Minerva.

* * *

><p>Minerva Paradizo was looking around her hotel room. The others had left, but she needed to think.<p>

It'd been three years since the demon incident, but hardly a day passed without her analyzing it. Analyzing her actions, her plans. And most of all, her feelings.

She'd felt something when she'd met Artemis Fowl, she was sure of it. But she'd only been twelve then. A foolish child.

The sixteen-year-old sighed, and looked down. She'd recently gotten an email from Butler. Artemis had contacted a mental illness called Atlantis Complex.

She wanted to see him again, to ask about his new adventures with the fairies. She dialed Butler's number. He picked up on the first ring.

"Hello?"

"Hello, Butler, this is Minerva. Could I see Artemis again?"

"I was about to call you to ask the same of you."

"Perfect."


	2. Ryan Won't Be Getting His Skateboard

Ruby Madison scrolled through Artemis Fowl's files. "Minerva Paradizo. Juliet Butler. Domovoi Butler. Angeline Fowl. These are the most prominent humans in Artemis's files. And you know what they all have in common?" She paused, waiting for her twin brother to ask a simple "what?" When he didn't reply, she answered her own question. "They all know about the existence of fairies."

"I honestly don't see how this helps Dad," Ryan Madison yawned.

"Due to my research, Father does not suffer from a human illness. You know our mother must be from the underworld—our ears and gift of tongues proves it."

Ryan gingerly touched his pointed ears. "Yeah, but spare me from your lecture on genetics and what a pity it is that we hadn't inherited the magic allele." Both twins had been the result of an affair their father had with an elf nine years ago. They resembled each other almost perfectly, with light green eyes, pale skin, and lush golden hair. The only difference was that Ryan had also inherited their father's splattering of freckles around the nose.

"Allele_s_, plural. More than one factor determines the inheritance of magic."

"Whatever."

"Anyways, I assume that his interaction with Mother has caused his illness. It must be due to a difference in genetics when our zygotes—"

"Look, seriously, Ruby, skip the sciencey stuff and just tell me what we've got to do."

"_Sciencey? Sciencey? _Ryan, surely your vocabulary is better than that."

"What do we need to do?"

Ruby thought for a moment. "You pay for our tickets to Ireland, where we will speak with Artemis and perhaps go down to the fairy world for a treatment. I will continue scouring his files for any details about what Father's illness may be."

"Wait, wait, back up a minute. _I _pay for our tickets to Ireland?"

"I apologize, Ryan, but I spent all my savings on this laptop and the programs needed to breach Artemis's security."

"I was saving that money for a new skateboard!"

"What is more important—Father's life or your skateboard?" Ruby snapped, losing her patience.

Ryan thought for a moment. "Hmmm…the skateboard?"

"I cannot believe you, you ungrateful idiot," Ruby screeched, snapping her laptop shut and stomping out of the room.

"Can't she take a joke?" Ryan muttered under his breath.

* * *

><p>"Artemis, you're meeting Minerva next week," Butler called, holding his cell phone. He'd just been conversing with her, about romance novels, Butler admitted silently.<p>

"Perfect. Holly, book me a ride on the next magma flare."

"What? You can't leave until you're perfectly healthy again, which will be in two weeks!"

"One week and six days," Artemis corrected. He raised his left eyebrow. "Then are you saying that Minerva can ride a shuttle down to the underworld?"

"After she almost exposed the fairies in the demon incident? Never. Commander Kelp would not allow it."

Artemis smirked. "Exactly. Then I must go to the surface and meet her."

Holly scowled—she hated it when he was right.

Which was most of the time.

* * *

><p>"I need my computer," Artemis croaked. "I must work on <em>THE PROJECT<em>."

"You're still working on that?" Mulch groaned.

"Yes, although I may want to negotiate the amount of money I spend on it."

"Of course," Holly smirked.

Juliet, who had taken a break from reviewing the new schedule her Mexican wrestling team had sent her, handed Artemis his silver laptop. Artemis started it up, pushing the familiar green button.

Suddenly, all the color drained from his face. Butler immediately rushed to his charge's side. "Artemis, what is it?"

The fifteen-year-old said nothing. When he finally spoke, it was not an answer to the question; it was a simple "D'Arvit."


	3. Mulch Adores Girly Japanese Anime

"So you're saying someone breached your security and stole your information on the fairies?" Minerva asked slowly. She'd arrived about ten minutes ago, and Artemis had been shocked by her changes, both in physical appearance and personality. She'd grown at least four inches taller, and she was nearly as tall as Artemis. Her hair wasn't in the tight curls as they were in before, but instead loose waves that cascaded down her shoulders, stopping abruptly at her waist. Her light blue eyes had grown more intense, somehow, and less bloodshot. Artemis hated to think of Minerva as anything beyond a friend, but even he admitted to himself that she was pretty. More than pretty, she was beautiful.

And as to her demeanor…she was less arrogant, but still so intelligent. Before they'd met, she was about eighty percent genius and twenty percent adolescent girl. Now, after nearly four years, she'd balanced out to fifty/fifty. And Artemis hoped that she wouldn't be quite so competitive with him. That quality had ruined their potential friendship and turned them into adversaries.

"No, I wouldn't use _steal_. Rather, the person duplicated my files and took one of the copies for themselves. I still have access to all my information."

Minerva bit her lip and ran her fingers through her golden locks. "So did you try tracking down the IP address?"

"Of course. Foaly—do you remember him? He's the—"

"How could I forget him? He was the one who'd treated destroying my family's mansion like a video game," Minerva said bitterly, cutting Artemis off.

"Still bitter, is she?" Foaly simpered into the communication unit Holly had hidden in her ear. She was shielded, vibrating in the corner of the room, watching Artemis and Minerva's exchange.

Minerva slid on the pair of expensive-looking sunglasses she was holding in her left hand and looked directly at Holly. "And I can see you in the corner, elf."

"Fine," Holly shrugged, turning her shield off and sitting into an upholstered chair next to the bookcase.

"Thermography filters using an infrared camera," Artemis nodded in approval. "Anyways, as I was saying, I had Foaly attempt to track down the geolocation of the hacker, to no avail. The most he found was that whoever it is lives in America. He/she did a very good job of covering up their tracks."

"Americans," Butler grumbled. The last time Artemis had dealt with one, Butler'd nearly died. Only Artemis's intelligence, Holly's magic, and a freezer holding seafood had saved him. Not that the seafood had made a big difference.

"This is extremely dangerous. Whoever it is could expose the fairy world in minutes. By tomorrow, the entire underworld may be in jeopardy," Minerva said nervously.

"Hey, Arty, I thought your super-special computer was _unhackable_," Foaly smirked into the earpiece Artemis had attached to his right ear. Artemis scowled.

"And I thought you could trace any IP address, Donkey Boy," he retorted. To Minerva, Butler, and Holly, it appeared as if he had just spontaneously insulted someone named Donkey Boy who was not within earshot.

"What?" Butler asked, confused. Had his Atlantis Complex returned?

"Artemis must have a communication device hidden in his ear and he is talking to whoever is on the other end—Foaly, I'm willing to bet. Donkey Boy is a possible demeaning nickname for a centaur, which Foaly is," Minerva told Butler. Butler nodded, secretly impressed with her quick assumptions (which were obviously correct, based on Artemis's contemptuous expression).

"We must find whoever it is," Holly blurted out, her hands automatically going for her Neutrino. Then she realized her action and grinned sheepishly. "Oops, I'm just used to hand-to-hand combat."

"And we must discover the identity of the hacker _quickly_," Artemis said.

"Or else the entire underworld may be destroyed," Minerva concluded.

Little did they know that the enemies they were fighting against this time were a pair of nine-year-old twins.

* * *

><p>"You owe me a steak. And a real one too, made out of real meat," Mulch said. He and Juliet were playing a video game in which the players had to wrestle each other and Mulch had won for the sixteenth time in a row. They had both opted out of the meeting with Minerva and were hanging out in the Fowl living room. No need to be around genii using fancy science jargon they didn't understand a world of.<p>

"In real life, I'd _cream _you," Juliet growled, writing the steak down in the small black journal she carried everywhere. She also owed him tickets to various concerts of fairies she'd never heard of, four different meat items, and a full box set of _Shugo Chara! _DVDs. Apparently the dwarf had a soft spot for girly Japanese animes focused on self-esteem.

The dwarf stood up, trying to make his 3'7" stature look menacing. "Oh? Then let's wrestle."

The twenty-one-year-old got into fighting stance. "Bring. It. On." She pounced onto Mulch and used her index finger and thumb to twist the skin above a pressure point. Mulch, who had completely forgotten about the hamburger Juliet owed him if she lost this fight, freaked out. He opened his mouth and bit into the hard wooden floor of Fowl Manor. Within seconds, he'd created a decent tunnel. Juliet lost her footing, as she was not used to wrestling dwarfs, and fell through the hole. She climbed out of the hole after she'd realized what was going on. Mulch quickly scrambled up after her.

She stuck her tongue out at him. "You owe me…hmmm…."

Suddenly, they both heard a woman's voice. "Butler? Arty? What was that I heard in the living room? I'm going over there to investigate!" The click-clacking of Angeline Fowl's stilettos became louder and louder as she approached the room.

Mulch and Juliet glanced at each other and came to the same solution at one. They both ran out of the room, hoping that they wouldn't be blamed for the suspicious hole in the middle of the living room, two feet away from the prized antique grand baby piano.


	4. Opal Koboi's Crimes Are Actually Helpful

"Father?" Ruby cautiously opened the door to her father's bedroom. Ryan was at basketball practice, and she'd just finished reading the file on Commander Julius Root Artemis had written. The smell hit her. _Lilacs? _It reminded her of her deceased Aunt Raina's perfume. She'd known the identity of their mother, and had promised to tell them on their thirteenth birthdays. But then, last spring, she'd died peacefully in her sleep, with the cause unknown.

She gasped at the sight of her father. Richard Madison looked up at her blankly and attempted to speak, but the only noise that came out of his mouth was a groan. The doctor had told Ruby that his condition was worsening rapidly, but she hadn't expected something like _this_.

She picked up the clipboard Dr. Hendrickson had used and scanned the pages. A graph of Richard's heartbeat, nearly flatlining; a record of his health issues (Type 1 diabetes and high blood pressure); and a note to his assistant.

_**Danielle-**_

_**Every single one of his organs are failing. There is absolutely no cure. Do not tell the kid this, if there is no hope she will not require my services anymore and I still owe Mike ten grand from gambling and it's not like customers are beating down my door begging my help.**_

_**-Bryan**_

Ruby blinked, not comprehending. That was impossible. Her father could not die.

Dr. Hendrickson was a horrible, selfish, man. Obviously she would immediately dispose of him. She grabbed the nearest phone and dialed his number. Danielle picked up on the fourth ring.

"Hello?" the young redhead asked sweetly.

"This is Ruby Madison," Ruby answered coldly.

"Oh, the little girl!" Danielle said cheerfully. "What can I do for you?"

If this had been Artemis calling Danielle, he would've made some cutting comeback in response to the_ little girl _(which would be _boy_ in his case) remark. If this had been Minerva, she would've explained how although she was only 5'4", Danielle was only 5'7", and a three-inch-difference did not give Danielle authority to call her _little girl_. But this was Ruby, and so she ignored the comment.

"I must speak with Dr. Hendrickson," she said.

"Oh, Bryan?" Some grunting followed, and Ruby thought she heard him say "I'm still in a hangover, I'm not talking with anyone."

"Dr. Hendrickson is not available right now," Danielle said. "We apologize for the inconvenience, he is currently examining a different client."

_You mean he spent too many hours at the casino last night_, Ruby thought bitterly. _Why did I ever choose to employ him anyways? _But she knew the answer. Because she was desperate. _Artemis Fowl's files are my last hope._ She was a lot less confident than she had pretended to be in front of Ryan.

"Then could you relay this message to him?" Ruby asked.

"Sure."

"He's fired."

There was silence on the other end. Then Danielle cleared her throat and spoke again. "Wh-what?"

"You heard me. I'm giving him the pink slip, he's sacked. Understand?"

Danielle's high soprano voice was weak. "Y-yes."

"Good." Ruby pressed END and set down the phone.

She put a wet, cold, towel on Richard's forehead since he was feverish and went back to her computer. She clicked on a file titled "Opal Koboi."

It turned out that Opal Koboi was a pixie genius. She was currently in jail. Ruby scrolled down the list of Opal's crimes, trying to just scan it, but the list was extremely long and she decided to just read the entire thing.

Two hours later, Ruby was reading Opal's most recent crime. A smile spread across the nine-year-old genius's face, the blue glow of the laptop screen highlighting her dimples. "That just might be it," she whispered.

* * *

><p>"I'm pretty good with technology, do you want me to endeavor to trace the IP address?" Minerva offered. It had been nearly three hours since she'd arrived. They'd discussed different tactics and tricks, but nothing had worked. Angeline had barged in two hours ago, demanding to know who had created a hole in the living room. They'd all immediately blamed Mulch and Juliet, and Angeline was currently hunting the pair down in her Bentley.<p>

Artemis shrugged and handed her his laptop. "We've got nothing to lose."

She began tapping at the keyboard and squinted at the screen. She then began furiously typing, her fingers flying over the keys.

Two minutes later, she wiped her forehead. "Whoever it is lives in Malibu, California...I've got the physical address right here." She copied something down onto a Post-it note. "Now let's go to Google Maps and-"

"Google Maps? How old-fashioned are you?" Foaly snickered. Artemis had connected his earpiece to a projector, and now everyone could hear him (unfortunately).

"You're good," Artemis said to Minerva, impressed. "When did you learn this?"

Minerva shrugged modestly. "Practice makes perfect, right?"

Not always.


End file.
